Thursday, February 28, 2013

Words are failing me today. We are into some heavy spots in our homeschooling year and days can feel a bit laborious. Its great to have a husband who takes care of dinner/clean up so I can spend evenings in the studio.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

... Adriana who chose the Grey Mountain earrings with second place going to Emily who will receive the Blue House earrings! I'll be in contact today to get your snail mail addresses and will ship your earrings out asap!

Above was the real draw. I didn't think about how the scrap paper was going to look in photos so we "staged" the chosen names on nice brown paper but the "closed eyes, pick a name" thing was all completely accurate and apparently so stressful and exhausting for Samuel that he had to have a second breakfast. (He says PLEASE don't be upset with him if your name wasn't chosen :-)

Thursday, February 21, 2013

I thought you might like to see some interesting metal tube rivets. I particularly liked these because here, tube rivets are used as design rather than a connection. The rivet becomes the focal point, almost like an industrial "gem".

Thank you to the artist, Lorrie Mason at Masonmetaldesigns, for letting me post her rings here. She uses tube rivets is a lot of the pieces - just check out her Etsy shop.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

I trained as a metalsmith so I still think in terms of metal techniques sometimes. And sometimes...this doesn't work at all but other times it does, as in the case of tube rivets.

For those who are unfamiliar, a tube rivet is a cold connection for metal - meaning no soldering required. You drill a hole into two pieces of metal that you want to connect, line up the holes and put a small piece of metal tubing into the hole. Then you hammer into the tube, flaring the edges and sandwiching the metal pieces together. I don't NEED this technique to connect polymer but you can use it as an interesting way to finish a hole.

Materials:

- polymer clay in colors of your choice

I'm using bright yellow and medium grey for the tube rivet as it "suggests" sterling silver

- large needle

- pasta machine and roller

- cutters, patterns or templates of your choice

- flexible blade

1. Condition your polymer and make a base shape, cut out with a cutter or template or, as I did, just roll a blob through the pasta machine on the thickest setting.

2. Next make very tiny balls of grey clay - these are your mock tube rivets - they can of course vary in size but mine were about the size of peppercorns.

3. Mark a whole with your needle in the flat piece of clay to mark your opening.

4. Put the small ball of clay over the hole and CAREFULLY flatten with your acrylic roller. You don't want to squish the earring, especially if you have any texture on it, and you don't want the rivet totally imbedded in the surface. Go slowly, you can always roll a little more if you need to. You want it close but not totally flush with the surface of the earring.

5. Re-pierce the hole with your needle and widen it further by twirling the needle.

6. Bake according to package directions.

7. Enlarge the hole even more with a drill if you'd like. (I do.) The hole should correspond in size to the rivet - the larger the rivet, the larger the hole should be.

Optional: if you like you can distress your earring with black acrylic at this point, wiping the excess off quickly. The little bit that is left at the edge of the rivet enhances the effect even further. Still too much paint? Buff with some steel wool.

So here I've used this idea with some of my Shape earrings - I'm sure you can modify it to suit your purposes and style.

top: Grey Mountain earrings
bottom: Blue House earrings

The give away is now closed! Thanks to everyone who followed and commented. The winner will be announced Tuesday, Feb. 26!

I'm no longer posting to this blog but you can follow my new blog here...

Thursday, February 14, 2013

and the how-to I'm working on didn't get finished. I'll post - How I make mock tube rivets with polymer - next Tuesday along with a give away for one of the pairs of earrings I made using the technique. Have a good weekend!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Considering the quantity of time I spend on the internet its bizarre to come upon things, good things, good sites that I've never heard of - proof of just how MUCH is out there I guess. Thats what I thought when I found "101 Cookbooks - a recipe journal". Its full of great recipes

I am stepping away from the computer a little this month and giving attention and time to family and some other projects that have been on the back burner for a while. My Etsy shop will stay open but I won't re-list items as often and I'll let old designs expire. I'll keep posting here though, shooting for twice a week.

Thanks for the follows on my new blog! I'll be shifting things over there sometime soon so if you'd like to keep following you can head over there and "click".